Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
Invocation now removes Evocation cooldown, and reduces its channeling time and duration by 50%. A completed Evocation now grants 15% increased damage for 1 minute after an Evocation is completed, instead of 25% increased damage for 40 seconds. Passive mana regeneration is reduced by 50% only while Invoker's Energy is active. (Buff)
Glyph of Evocation now causes the Invocation talent to restore 10% (was 20%) health after completing an Evocation. (Buff)
Greater Invisibility now has a 90-second cooldown (was 2.5 minutes). (Buff)
Frostbolt cast by Mirror Image now deals 50% more damage. (Buff)
Glyph of Fire Blast has been replaced with Glyph of Inferno Blast. Glyph of Inferno Blast causes damage-over-time effects spread by Inferno Blast to spread to 1 additional target. (No Idea)
Blazing Speed is now a level-15 talent, replacing Scorch. (Buff)
Flameglow, a new talent is available at level 30 and replaces Blazing Speed. The passive ability encases the Mage in fiery energy, absorbing damage from each attack made against the Mage equal to 20% of their spellpower, up to a maximum of 30% of the attack. (Buff, lol dots)
Ice Floes now has a 45-second cooldown (was 1 minute) and its duration has been increased to 15 seconds (was 10 seconds). (Buff)
Incanter's Ward can now be removed by magic dispels. (Nerf)
Ring of Frost cast instantly through Presence of Mind now has a 2-second arming period before the Freeze effect is activated against targets in the area of effect. The 2-second arming period can be reduced by Haste. (Nerf)
Temporal Ripples from Temporal Shield can no longer be dispelled. (Buff)
Deep Freeze now stuns the target for 5 seconds (was 4 seconds). (Buff, AND WTF!)
Glyph of Deep Freeze now removes it from global cooldown but also reduces its duration by 1 second. (Buff? Nerf? Who the fuck knows mage Glyphs)
Mage PvP 2-piece bonus now requires Counterspell to successfully interrupt a spell before applying the 4 second cooldown reduction to Counterspell. (Nerf)
Arcane
For Arcane Mages, Evocation now restores 40% (was 60%) of total mana over 6 seconds, and consumes all Arcane Charge. For each Arcane Charge consumed, the total amount of mana regenerated is increased by 10%, up to a maximum of 80% over 6 seconds. Evocation remains the same for Fire and Frost. (Buff)
Arcane Blast damage has been reduced by 22.2% and mana cost has been increased to 1.66667% of base mana (was 1.5%). (Nerf)
Arcane Missile's damage has been reduced by 22.2%. (Nerf)
Arcane Barrage damage has been reduced by 13.6%. (Nerf)
Arcane Charge now stacks up to 4 times (was 6), increases damage by 50% (was 25%), and increases mana cost by 150% (was 75%). (Not doing the math on that one)
Fire
Scorch is no longer a talent and is now available to all Fire Mages. (Buff?)
Frost
Fingers of Frost now has a 15% (was 12%) chance to activate from Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Frozen Orb, and a 5% (was 4%) chance to activate from Blizzard. (Buff)
Glyph of Ice Lance now causes Ice Lance to deal 50% damage to 1 additional target, up from 40%. (Buff)
Frostbolt now deals 32% more damage. (HOLYSHIT WTF BUFF!)
Water Elemental
Freeze no longer does damage and only provides Fingers of Frost on a successful freeze. (Nerf)

On a simple count of buffs vs nerfs I think the Buffs have it by 7, not counting changes I dont know for sure. 32% to Frost Bolt! Mages Shatters dont do enough damage already.

That is Mage Balancing for you. He wants them to cast more so he buffs Frostbolt by 32%, he wants warriors in Battle Stance more so he nerfs D Stance, then guts our rage system. If GC treated warriors like Mages we'd be getting 20% damage reduction in Battle instead of 15% in D Stance, and our rage gen doubled!

Last edited by Korgoth; 2013-03-05 at 02:47 AM.

"Gamer" is not a bad word. I identify as a gamer. When calling out those who persecute and harass, the word you're looking for is "asshole." @_DonAdams

When you see someone in a thread making the same canned responses over and over, click their name, click view forum posts, and see if they are a troll. Then don't feed them.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. He wants them to cast more so they buff Frost Bolt but don't nerf the instant casts and even buffs CC and survivability.
So in addition to having everything they have now they get even more. Great.

On a simple count of buffs vs nerfs I think the Buffs have it by 7, not counting changes I dont know for sure. 32% to Frost Bolt! Mages Shatters dont do enough damage already.

That is Mage Balancing for you. He wants them to cast more so he buffs Frostbolt by 32%, he wants warriors in Battle Stance more so he nerfs D Stance, then guts our rage system. If GC treated warriors like Mages we'd be getting 20% damage reduction in Battle instead of 15% in D Stance, and our rage gen doubled!

Good thing you can count. I'm counting 12 buffs (and most of them are completely irrelevant for pvp) and 12 nerfs. Warriors also have close to three times the representation of mages at high ratings, so it's quite justified to nerf them significantly harder.

Haha yeah if GC treated mages like other classes, Frostbolt wouldnt have gotten buffed, and Ice Lance would be doing 50% damage to players.

Though I dont feel they are that bad in 5.2 as Rogue, Feral and Hunter are all quite overpowered and eat them. You can force a mage to block from Ranged as a rogue now. Its pretty funny.

To be fair to mages, half of the buffs in that list do not apply to PVP. Take greater invisibility for example, still no PVP mage will take that talent. And the buff to frostbolt won't be very meaningful because mages still won't have the luxury to cast it in high-end PVP.

Also glyph of deep freeze is a rather significant nerf. Now you are faced with either 5-sec stun, but substract 1.5 sec GCD, or a 4-sec stun but off the GCD. Either way the burst window is shorter so you can at most get a frostbolt+icelance in there.

Good thing you can count. I'm counting 12 buffs (and most of them are completely irrelevant for pvp) and 12 nerfs. Warriors also have close to three times the representation of mages at high ratings, so it's quite justified to nerf them significantly harder.

Ah yes because the number of players on the class is more important then the actual power level of the class. Why have a game where classes are balanced against each other in PvP when you can have a game that has the same number of ranked player on each class.

"Gamer" is not a bad word. I identify as a gamer. When calling out those who persecute and harass, the word you're looking for is "asshole." @_DonAdams

When you see someone in a thread making the same canned responses over and over, click their name, click view forum posts, and see if they are a troll. Then don't feed them.

Well, having played on the PTR for the last weeks I can only say one thing. Mages do insanely pathetic burst, EVERY 30 SEC. Its way out of control, and way worse than it is live atm. If this goes live, mages will fit perfectly in the stereotype their already being put it.
This cming from a mage btw, a mage who will piss on everything with RMP again.

Ah yes because the number of players on the class is more important then the actual power level of the class. Why have a game where classes are balanced against each other in PvP when you can have a game that has the same number of ranked player on each class.

The number of players playing warriors isn't three times as high for warriors as it is for mages, nor is the number of players the major factor when it comes to high rating representation. Warriors are retardedly strong right now, mages aren't, deal with it.

Well, having played on the PTR for the last weeks I can only say one thing. Mages do insanely pathetic burst, EVERY 30 SEC. Its way out of control, and way worse than it is live atm. If this goes live, mages will fit perfectly in the stereotype their already being put it.
This cming from a mage btw, a mage who will piss on everything with RMP again.

the nerfs were frost bomb doing crap dmg and imp cs being 20s only if u interrupt.

let me guess - you were watching venruki who sets up his procs and IW and blows people up with a timed frost bomb shatter, 95% of the mages cant do that, so that's why its balanced.

i think its perfectly legitimate to pull off amazing burst(lets not get too far ahead of ourselves, not that amazing, but still) as long as you can line up everything and set up the kill.

you cant compare class to class nerfs because classes work differently(true story). look at warriors - for 2 expansions they deal a lot of dmg as long as they keep up, so if they set up their burst with charge/leaps at the right time they can do a lot of dmg, same like mages. and then give warriors unlimited mobility and the same dmg, and you get mop. thats why they got the nerfbat and thats why it looks so much more than the mage nerfs.

just because rmp will be godlike again doesn't mean its all mages fault - noone looks at priests throwing 500k shields or rogues destroying on swaps and ccing the whole enemy team in a heart beat. RMP has always been broken because of the synergy of the 3 classes, not because mages are out of hand.

To be fair to mages, half of the buffs in that list do not apply to PVP. Take greater invisibility for example, still no PVP mage will take that talent. And the buff to frostbolt won't be very meaningful because mages still won't have the luxury to cast it in high-end PVP.

Just gonna quote on this for the sake of doing so, but frost bolt crits as high as chaosbolt, yet has a lot smaller casttime. A good frost mage will know how to get a cast off when it's needed.

As for mages, they could actually have used a little buff, and I really mean a little little.
Yes yes, I know, mages are very strong at 1.5k rating, but once you get to higher ratings, mages are no longer that strong since people know how to counter you.
That being said, I don't really agree with all these changes.

Originally Posted by Korgoth

Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)

[insert huge list of mage changes]

On a simple count of buffs vs nerfs I think the Buffs have it by 7, not counting changes I dont know for sure. 32% to Frost Bolt! Mages Shatters dont do enough damage already.

That is Mage Balancing for you. He wants them to cast more so he buffs Frostbolt by 32%, he wants warriors in Battle Stance more so he nerfs D Stance, then guts our rage system. If GC treated warriors like Mages we'd be getting 20% damage reduction in Battle instead of 15% in D Stance, and our rage gen doubled!

You are looking at too many things that don't change a thing for PvP. A buff to arcane is not going to change a thing about the state of frost in PvP

EDIT: before people take it all out of context, I think mages actually need a nerf for lower rated play and a small buff for higher rated play.

Frostbomb is imo the only op damaging spell mages have left and they don't use it most of the time because they have close to no instant damage if they can't cast it and considering they have no ways to detonate it now you can just dispel it.
Besides that their instant ccs (counterspell and ring of frost) and damage (incanter's ward change is big) are getting nerfed.

The only thing affecting pvp other than these are flameglow and frostbolt buffs. Considering they can never cast frostbolt I don't know what to say about that. Flameglow will help them survive against dot cleaves but that doesn't mean that they won't be viable targets.

Frostbomb is imo the only op damaging spell mages have left and they don't use it most of the time because they have close to no instant damage if they can't cast it and considering they have no ways to detonate it now you can just dispel it.
Besides that their instant ccs (counterspell and ring of frost) and damage (incanter's ward change is big) are getting nerfed.

The only thing affecting pvp other than these are flameglow and frostbolt buffs. Considering they can never cast frostbolt I don't know what to say about that. Flameglow will help them survive against dot cleaves but that doesn't mean that they won't be viable targets.

The idea with the Frostbolt thing is to get Frost Mages to expose their cast bar more and move less, hence making burst harder to set up, and easier to shut down. I play Fire, so I don't know if this is going to work. IW being dispellable is a fairly significant nerf, particularly since its is (now) an incredibly underwhelming level 90 talent.

Probably the biggest nerf is Frosties being unable to detonate the Frost Bomb though. The 100-0 in a deep will be 100-30, 100-40 now. Still sounds like a lot, but Mages have awful self heal and most other classes do - anything that prolongs fights will disadvantage a Mage.

Additionally, as another poster said above, 3 classes will absolutely hard counter Mages in 5.2. thats going to keep them in check.

On a simple count of buffs vs nerfs I think the Buffs have it by 7, not counting changes I dont know for sure. 32% to Frost Bolt! Mages Shatters dont do enough damage already.

That is Mage Balancing for you. He wants them to cast more so he buffs Frostbolt by 32%, he wants warriors in Battle Stance more so he nerfs D Stance, then guts our rage system. If GC treated warriors like Mages we'd be getting 20% damage reduction in Battle instead of 15% in D Stance, and our rage gen doubled!

I actually fucking face palmed. You're clearly only concerned with PvP, that means you can totally disregard any changes to the arcane spec and talents that no mage will ever take in PvP (Temporal Shield, Greater Invis, Invocation, etc.) Your attempt at labeling changes with buff/nerf is laughable. I Don't understand how you could possibly think that the evocate heal being reduced from 20% to 10% is a buff.

On another note, you can't decide whether a class was buffed or nerfed by counting the number of buffs and numbers of nerfs. Some changes are bigger than others. It's baffling that with how little you know about the class you can complain about it.

Well, having played on the PTR for the last weeks I can only say one thing. Mages do insanely pathetic burst, EVERY 30 SEC. Its way out of control, and way worse than it is live atm. If this goes live, mages will fit perfectly in the stereotype their already being put it.
This cming from a mage btw, a mage who will piss on everything with RMP again.

Yeah mage burst is ridic, but you will get raped by any thug cleave with rmp